Vol. 4, No. 2, Winter 2007, 211-220
www.ncsu.edu/project/acontracorriente
Review/Reseña
Martin Austin Nesvig, ed. Local Religion in Colonial Mexico
(Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2006).
The Many Catholicisms of Colonial Mexico
Robert Haskett
University of Oregon
Martin Nesvig has made an important new contribution to our
knowledge of the Catholic Church in New Spain with this high quality
anthology. The emphasis of its ten substantial articles rests on people
of various kinds and conditions and nature and their encounters with
the institution and its belief system, with their lived faiths and local
religions. Nesvig writes that the present volume began as a response
to the conceptual challenge thrown down by William Christian, Jr. in
his path-breaking Local Religion in Sixteenth-Century Spain (1981);
Christian contributes in Chapter 10 a kind of afterword to this
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present volume, in fact. As such, the chapters assembled in Local
Religion in Colonial Mexico are intended to encourage the
emergence of a more accurate understanding of the nature and
practice of Catholicism in colonial New Spain. Much of the
scholarship presented in this volume is informed not only by the
analytical model developed by William Christian, Jr., but also by the
approach now known as cultural history (as pioneered by people
such as Clifford Geertz). As such, the anthology challenges the
premise that the early post-invasion process of evangelization and
Christian instruction carried out by the Franciscans and other orders
and members of the Catholic clergy can be viewed as a uniformly
triumphant process of “Spiritual Conquest,” and that over the course
of time some kind of homogenous Catholic observance emerged in
the colony.
All of these ideas are set out in the editor’s lucid introduction
to the volume, which also includes a brief historiographical study of
the subject under examination here. They are carried forward in
Nesvig’s other contribution to the book, “The ‘Indian Question’ and
the Case of Tlaltelolco” (Chapter 3), which provides an accessible
analysis of the Franciscans controversial experiment at Santa Cruz de
Tlaltelolco to teach Nahua youths theology with the expectation that
at least some of them might become ordained priests. Of particular
note is what might be called Nesvig’s resurrection of a forgotten
Franciscan scholar and theologian, Alfonso de Castro, who is
convincingly positioned here as the creator of the most effective and
learned defense of the education and ordination of indigenous men.
Nesvig argues that Castro believed that one’s race or ethnicity was
unimportant here; rather, one’s intellect and religious constancy was
what counted. Such views obviously were radical for the sixteenth
century, and more negative assessments by other clergy in both
Spain and New Spain led to official bans on indigenous ordination
issued by the first two Mexican councils (1555, 1565; Archbishop
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213
Montúfar, for example, vehemently argued that indigenous people
could never be more than perpetual children, particularly in terms of
what might be called “spiritual maturity”).
The book’s first full chapter, “The Concept of Popular
Religion,” by Carlos M.N. Eire aptly contributes a probing
investigation of the precise meanings of “popular religion,” by tracing
the dawning realization among some within the early Church that the
faith as practiced by large numbers of people was distinct—perhaps
not fully Christian—from that of the clergy and the educated. This is
coupled with a historiographical examination of the ways in which
scholars of the later 20th century grappled with the same concept.
Eire argues that however they are precisely labeled, most approaches
have ended up being binary in some way, exploring dichotomies
between “official” and “lay” religion without always carefully defining
what such terms mean. This binary approach has tended to reduce
complexities to simple, opposed analytical categories.
Eire’s argument is a fitting one for this volume, which
encapsulates a number of different ideas about the nature of
“popular religion,” a characteristic that is one of the strengths of
Local Religion in Colonial Mexico. The book is not just about a
generic “local religion” that emerged in the colony; it does not simply
look at the ways in which indigenous people like the Nahuas created
a new kind of “indigenous Catholicism.” Rather, a whole range of
“local religions” are explored here. Nonetheless, as prefigured in
Nesvig’s introduction, the “indigenous question” is a significant one
and is thus the subject of several of the present studies. Antonio
Rubial García’s “Icons of Devotion: The Appropriation and Use of
Saints in New Spain” (Chapter Two) is a convincing disquisition on
the implantation of saint veneration in central Mexico after the
Spanish invasion. The author recounts the relatively quick
acceptance of saints by the indigenous people. He suggests that the
reasons for this rapidity are linked to their previous polytheistic
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beliefs, which included patron deities with specific control over
natural forces.
In this way, the attributes of indigenous divine
patrons were not dissimilar to the special patronage attributed
among Catholics to saintly intercessors who could be invoked for
protection or succor in the face of floods, earthquakes, and the like.
Rubial posits a process in which some form of dialog between
indigenous people living in specific localities and the clergy was
behind the emergence of specific saintly patrons. He demonstrates
how the spread of saint veneration was linked to the activities and
goals of various orders, and explains the ways in which creoles later
appropriated certain saints as they sought to define themselves and
New Spain in what might be called “protonationalistic” ways. Rubial
sees this development at work in the increasing celebration of creole
saints (even those who had not actually been canonized at the time),
such as Felipe de Jesús, who had been born in Mexico City, and the
Peruvian Santa Rosa de Lima, who also became popular in Mexico.
The significance of saints in terms of a much more localized
and gendered kind of identity is the theme of Chapter Six, “Carriers
of Saints: Traveling Alms Collectors and Nahua Gender Roles.”
Author Edward W. Osowski studies the ways in which indigenous
people—men and women who seem to have been from the highest
indigenous social stratum—took local saints’ images and images of
Christ on journeys around central Mexico in an effort to collect alms
for the support of their “cults” in other indigenous communities.
These efforts usually had the support of local curas, but in the later
eighteenth century increasingly ran afoul of the Juzgado General de
Indios because among other things this body was pressuring for an
end to the participation of women as traveling alms collectors. Along
the way, Osowski presents two major case studies, the first one
centered around the activities of Doña Ana Ventura Gómez, a cacica
of Mexico City, who wanted to coordinate the activities of traveling
alms collectors for Our Lady of Loreto, an image housed in the
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former Jesuit Colegio of San Gregorio; her efforts in 1791 to get a
renewal of a license permitting her to do so was ultimately denied by
the Juzgado. In the second case, an indigenous man named Gregorio
Aparicio, of the pueblo of Ecatepec, found his collection activities
complicated by a local dispute between several area communities
over the true “ownership” of an image and therefore about the right
to collect alms for it. All of this helps us grasp the importance of
saints and their images in terms of indigenous cultural beliefs and
practices. The article also gives good insights into the ways in which
Bourbon-era officialdom tried to control that same indigenous world
by maintaining or imposing social, physical, and even patriarchalstyle gender constraints on their communities.
David Tavárez provides a preliminary look at issues of
“Autonomy, Honor, and the Ancestors: Native Local Religion in
Seventeenth-Century Oaxaca” (Chapter Five) through the lens of
investigations of three alleged idolatrous outbreaks—or clandestine
religious practices based on indigenous traditions—in as many
Oaxacan communities of Villa Alta from the 1660s through the early
eighteenth century. This project, which unlike some of the others
presented in the present volume is in the beginning stages of its
development, is based in part on potentially rich records of
extirpation investigations. Tarávez highlights events in the pueblo of
Cajonos, and particularly a “Cajonos revolt” of 1700; two local
indigenous men who denounced supposed idolaters in the
community and became victims of rioters in this tumulto were later
cast by a priest in the nineteenth century as martyrs, and beatified in
2001 by Pope John Paul II. The chapter thus highlights the
discontinuity and conflict that could ensue in the complex (rather
than simply dichotomous) dialogue between Spanish clergy and
indigenous Christians, between one kind of Catholic faith that existed
in colonial Mexico and another kind of observance.
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The focus of subsequent chapters begins to move away from
indigenous Catholics in William Taylor’s elegantly written story of
the career of Franciscan and pastor of Nativitas Tepetlatcingo, a
Nahua pueblo south of the center of Mexico City (Chapter
Four,”Between Nativitas and Mexico City: An Eighteenth-Century
Pastor’s Local Religion”). The Franciscan Francisco Antonio de la
Rosa Figueroa became the champion of an image of the Virgin found
in Nativitas, an image that became so important to him that he had it
refurbished by an indigenous artist from Tlaltelolco. Renaming the
image Nuestra Señora del Patrocinio (Our Lady of the Intercession),
De la Rosa pushed for a more universal veneration of this Virgin and
eventually attributed thirty-five miracles to the image or to paper
representations of it. Like William Christian, Jr., Taylor recognizes
the clergy not just as enforcers of official orthodoxy, but rather as
human beings with their own “local religion” formed by their
particular life experiences. De la Rosa’s efforts to spread his personal
“local religion” to his parishioners and throughout central New Spain
failed, probably because the Church did not support them and
because he too obviously held the beliefs of his indigenous flock in
contempt; they continued to refer to the Virgin’s image as Our Lady
of Nativitas, her persona even today.
Chapters Seven and Eight shift the anthology’s gaze to
confraternities. In “Confraternities and Community: The Decline of
the Communal Quest for Salvation in Eighteenth-Century Mexico
City,”
Brain
Larkin
crafts
an
intriguing
investigation
of
confraternities and their Spanish members in late eighteenth-century
Mexico City. These organizations were dedicated to the proper
celebration and monetary support of funeral processions and burials
of the members, as well as of masses dedicated to intercessor saints
venerated by the confraternity celebrated on behalf of deceased
members’ souls. For Larkin this is another form of local religion, a
local religion that did not just rest upon the kind of devotion to saints
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217
and shrines examined by William Christian, Jr., but one which also
incorporated regular participation—often very active and colorful—in
the official liturgy of the church. Nicole von Germeten (Chapter
Eight, “Routes to Respectability: Confraternities and Men of African
Descent in New Spain”) contributes a fascinating compilation of two
case studies of Afro-Mexican men who were active in confraternities
of Mexico City and Valladolid (Morelia): Juan Roque, a free man of
Zape origin of seventeenth-century Mexico City (d. 1629), and a
mulatto named Diego Durán, who was a master architect of
eighteenth-century Valladolid (d. 1795). Von Germeten believes that
the Zape cofradia of the Limpia Concepción gave free Africans such
as Roque at least a modicum of social mobility or recognition. This
was certainly true of Durán, who by the 1770s had achieved the post
of mayordomo of the cofradía of Our Lady of the Rosary “of the
mulattoes,” a post he held until his death. The “local religion” of
these confraternities, the sincere Catholic beliefs of their members,
their pious works, devotions, and comradery could enhance the
social stature of those involved.
Larkin sees a decline in Spanish confraternity membership
and activism over the course of the eighteenth century. He attributes
this decline to both a rise in a “modern” sense of individuality among
this group and a concomitant lessening of their need to belong to
communal organizations, as well as to efforts by ecclesiastical
authorities to reign in the sometimes lavish public displays put on
the by brotherhoods. However, the history of the mulatto
confraternity of Valladolid, which remained a strong group well into
the nineteenth century, suggests that this decline may not have been
uniform or universal. Instead, region, social class, and ethnicity may
have had a significant impact on the ways in which Larkin’s model
late colonial decline actually played out. It could be that while those
in advantaged positions such as the Spanish members of Mexico
City’s cofradías may not have needed the continued support of the
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soldalities, less advantaged groups, such as the mulattoes of
Valladolid, may have needed to maintain their participation in these
same kind of corporate “routes to respectability.”
A thoroughly gripping tale of the ways in which African and
mulatto slaves attempted to manipulate their own religiosity and the
sensibilities of those wielding power in the seventeenth century is
found in Chapter Nine, “Voices from a Living Hell: Slavery, Death,
and Salvation in a Mexican Obraje,” by Javier Villa-Flores. The
author documents the ways in which these bound workers attempted
to use declarations of Christian faith, or sometimes blasphemous
denunciations of that same faith, its saints, Christ, and God to lighten
or escape their torment. As a plus, the fine article provides a succinct,
sometimes horrifying window into the brutality of the colonial obraje
system, run on the backs of enslaved and mistreated workers, a
system obviously deserving the vile reputation that has echoed down
the years. The author makes skillful use of Inquisitional records and
other sources to follow the benighted careers of several slaves held in
the workshop of the Díaz de Posadas family. The testimony of the
slaves, the counter claims made by the owner, his family, and his
overseers, tales of corruption in both high and low places, and a trail
of violence provide us with a rich field of evidence for the ways in
which the “local religion” of slaves was consciously called upon by
them to ameliorate their horrendous conditions. While the strategy
seems to have worked for some of those slaves who managed to get
their cases heard by the Inquisition and who earned a kind of redress
(however minor: resale to another owner deemed less violent than
the present one), the story lacks a happy ending. In the long run,
during the eighteenth century thanks to growing official indifference
and persistent racism, it became harder and harder for obraje slaves
to use their own “local religion” to win even this stingy form of legal
succor.
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219
There are some caveats to be made here, however. As with any
anthology, the challenge is to maintain a general level of quality as
well as fidelity to an organizing theme. The editor and contributors
are generally successful here, in that the scholarly stature of the work
is collectively impressive. Yet some chapters are more closely in
keeping with the premise of “local religion” than others. “Voices from
a Living Hell,” a very good piece in its own right, is a bit of a stretch,
for instance. The Tavárez piece, the product of an early stage of a
larger research project, is thus somewhat more “preliminary” than
other contributions. Nesvig does not consider the groundbreaking
work of Louise Burkhart (above all her monograph The Slippery
Earth) in either the introduction to the volume or his essay in
Chapter 3, nor does he mention or cite the efforts of other
ethnohistorians and historical philologists who have translated and
pondered
the
implications
of
indigenous-language
religious
materials. This body of scholarship has helped us achieve a more
profound understanding of the ways in which the “conquered”
peoples found agency in the process through which Christianity
entered their pre-existing sacred consciousness, or in other words
how they engaged in a cultural dialog with the clergy and in so doing
participated in the emergence of new forms of “indigenous local
religion.” This omission diminishes the effectiveness of the editor’s
historiographical overview. A less important issue, though a nagging
one in a book positioned as a revisionist study, is connected with the
repetition here of the enduring idea that the “defender of the
Indians” Bartolomé de las Casas had a less savory side in the shape of
his justification of African slavery. In fact, recent research by scholars
of Las Casas’s life, work, and thought argues that the Dominican had
a change of heart about African slavery in the late 1540s, and
disavowed his earlier support for the institution (see for instance,
Isacio Pérez Fernández, Fray Bartolomé de las Casas, O.P., de
defensor de los indios a defensor de los negros [1995]). Finally, it is
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a pity that Local Religion in Colonial Mexico lacks a unified
bibliography, particularly since the volume seems to be intended for
classroom use (among other things). There is an index, though,
which is a welcome and useful feature, one not always to be expected
in anthologies such as this.
It is all too easy to allow a few lapses to overshadow the basic
strength and value of any work of scholarship. That is certainly not
my intention. The editor’s introduction and every other article in the
book make numerous and important conceptual and empirical
contributions on many different levels of comprehension. Local
Religion in Colonial Mexico will provide research scholars with much
new food for thought, and can be employed effectively in the upperdivision and graduate classroom (I will certainly assign the anthology
next time I teach my own “Spiritual Conquest” course). Perhaps the
best strategy here is to give the last word to William Christian, Jr.,
just as Local Religion in Colonial Mexico does itself (Chapter 10,
“Catholicisms”). Christian reminds us that in reality the Catholic
Church has historically harbored many different (though related)
“Catholicisms” rather than just one generic brand of Christian faith.
Local usos y costumbres meant that the same liturgy, the veneration
of the same saints, the beliefs about the nature and powers of saintly
and Marian intercessors, could be expressed in subtly (or not so
subtly) myriad ways. Christian’s final chapter is a fitting coda to this
excellent anthology, which so effectively instructs us about the many
different Catholicisms of colonial New Spain. The book leads us to
form new insights into the diverse nature of “local religions” as they
evolved among Mexico’s equally diverse human population.